[Theoretical] Official Faction Challenge System

[Binski]

We need to be open to at least testing this idea and I agree with Relation-Ship. Doing this without involving the staff, or implementing any new mechanics should be doable. The proposed system needs to be fine tuned to prevent abuse and to correspond with the established lore, while also not being overly bureaucratic or needlessly complex. Ignoring the problems with complexity and bureaucracy, I can see a few ways to improve upon the basic concept to make it more lore-friendly. These are not well thought out, but whatever.

Glad to have support! On this point though I can only say that I would prefer there be a staff overseen system. A great deal still does and can happen only on the part of the players. As far as impacting lore goes, if we go by limiting moves to within ZOI and/or bordering ZOI, a faction will really only be physically impacting its normal zone anyways. So if your faction can engage a ship or POB based on IFF without demands, an NPC base of an engageable IFF would be fair game as well.

• [b]Only bases belonging to a faction whose ID logged a comparable number of hours to the aggressors' ID should be fair targets.

I see it this way, if we do that then the best way to protect your stations is to not log at all. Instead if we give OF's the right to act, places at risk can be defended by anyone allied and especially Freelancers. It will ultimately provoke a situation where people will know they must rally under a faction to get stuff done. There will be other ways to mitigate how fast change happens. Weaker factions can be helped by independents. At some point we'll just see what happens. If it were seriously considered we could start going over scenarios in more depth.

The cost of besieging a base should depend on the distance from the attacking faction's home-system.

Well it doesn't allow for crusades. Unless a house were to have its diplomacy to another house or entity changed, engagements would be limited to ZOI. I've set the costs based on importance of the stations. Border stations being weakest and least significant are cheapest to attack. Shipyards and planets are the most expensive.

Sieges could only take place during certain hours, admittedly to the detriment of players from some time zones.

These would be really strong bases, personally I would prefer to keep it 24/7. Not every siege must be a wave of an armada. It can be trickle in and out activity like raids with small groups to score damage as long as you could before being taken out. If repairable like POB's, supply ships could be running supplies any time of day. This is what bolsters activity outside of peak hours, which in turn makes logging on during those hours better, which gets more people online all around the clock.

Kill ratios should count towards something, perhaps increasing the cost of the next attack or outright automatically giving the initiative to the other party.

I suppose kill counts for capitals could count towards something. But in this system's case, they'll already count big time. To make a siege happen ultimately caps will be the best path to success. To take them out fastest requires other caps. Kills will give bounties, and as long as one side can keep the other's caps at bay, the value of cap kills will have a literal impact.

Clearly this system cannot be implemented on the whole server at once. It also needs to be limited in scope to certain agreed upon regions. There needs to be a way to limit the consequences of having a faction unpopular with players but strong in-RP. In general the system and the outcomes it generates need to be kept within what is reasonable based on lore and RP. In other words, this system needs to conform to the inner logic of Freelancer universe, else we risk extreme immersion breaking events taking place due to player grudges or just luck. The whole RP universe would then collapse under the resulting inconsistencies. This, I believe, is what drives the majority of negative comments. (Apart from the admittedly combative posture Binski decided to take).

Ah but that's the thing, factions that have the best and most capabilities will become the most popular, meaning the strongest factions inrp will become the strongest oorp. In the case of the 4 Houses + Gallia, the presence of unlawfuls that can actually threaten lawful bases and routes will mean if anyone is actually trying to attack their bases, there will undoubtedly be opportunities in house military factions. The only factions to significantly threaten the houses and their corps not during war time are only a few unlawful factions.

The rest are smaller. They could do sieges but have lesser chances. Xenos or GC could still try to attack places, even if just to cause trouble, make a big gamble etc. The way its set up is, with a real change at stake, and a good heads up in the form of preparation RP (plus attack declaration), I believe most sieges will be balanced, and the more people try at any time, the harder they might actually get. Again, not knowing exactly how it will all work out is part of the fun! And I firmly believe that its set up well to allow for counter challenges to make sure no one feels like a loss has them stuck forever.

But, yes, it will mean that eventually the faction with less weight may be diminished a bit. After some time some changes may be permanent, some may always change back and forth regularly. I don't see any of it as likely to be out of lore, we can just limit it to ZOI, maybe make exceptions for OC's and limit them from sieging inside the houses, etc. We can make capital planets exempt, and maybe one 'command' or HQ station per faction. Personally though I doubt most factions will ever end up in that bad of shape. Any that do take losses will always have a bit of purpose, and create some purpose in trying to retake those bases. Also remember that once a base is taken by one faction, it may open it up to be taken by a competitor. Not all unlawfuls may get along. (Or it opens it up to another faction that couldn't attack it before. If OC's took Java, then anyone enemy to the OC's but not the IMG could then attack Java to capture it themselves. Someone else entirely could wind up in control of it, or IMG may lost control for a few weeks/months before winning a siege to retake it).

And to me, people look in on my threads and see me swinging the sword and shield against the trolls, and think that I'm the combative one!